Theoretical and empirical studies on "unidentified child abuse victims" : prevalence and psychological influences

在这个项目中，我们在3年的时间里进行了以下研究：1。本研究调查了大学生“身份不明儿童虐待受害者”的发生率，并探讨了身份不明儿童虐待对其心理适应（分离、抑郁、自尊）的影响。通过本研究，我们编制了“多形式儿童虐待量表（MCAI）”。我们将MCAI应用于家庭受虐儿童，并在大学生中进行收敛效度检验。它被证明有很好的有效性。我们为1-3岁和4-5岁的儿童开发了“儿童虐待症状量表”。然后，我们进行了一项大规模的研究，要求教师为他们在F州3个城市的日托中心的孩子填写问卷，以调查身份不明的受虐儿童的发生率。根据我们的发现，我们估计大约1.5%的中心儿童可以被确定为“身份不明的虐待儿童”，他们没有向PC机构报告。本研究透过对开放式问卷的回答进行定性分析，探讨日托中心教师难以报告在其中心发现的受虐儿童的原因。我们调查了日托中心老师虐待行为的普遍程度，方法是让大学生回顾他们小时候在日托中心的经历。我们调查了一家大型精神病院门诊病人中身份不明的虐待儿童受害者的发生率。为了探索普通人在报告受虐儿童时可能遇到的困难的可能原因，我们通过要求专业人员评估MCAI中虐待行为的严重程度，研究了专业人员与非专业人员（14种职业，包括大学生和管家）在虐待儿童专业知识方面的差异。我们发现，专业人士认为虐待行为比非专业人士更少。

In this project, we conducted the following studies during the period of 3 years :1.We investigated the prevalence of "unidentified child abuse (CA) victims' in college students and examined influences of CA on their psychological adjustment (dissociation, depression, self-esteem). Through this study, we developed "Multi-form Child Abuse Inventory (MCAI)."2.We tested clinical validity of MCAI by applying it to abused children in home and convergent validities with college students. It was shown to have good validities.3.We developed "Child Abuse Symptom Inventories" for 1-3 and 4-5 year olds. Then, we conducted a large-scale study, by asking teachers to file out the inventories for their children in daycare centers in 3 cities of Prefecture F, in order to investigate the prevalence of unidentified abused children. Based on our findings, we estimated about 1.5% of children in centers that can be identified as "unidentified abused children" who have not been reported to PC Agencies.4.We exploratorily investigated reasons of daycare-center teachers having difficulties of reporting abused children whom they found in their centers, by qualitatively analyzing their responses to open-ended questionnaire.5.We examined the prevalence of abusive acts committed by daycare-center teachers by asking college students to retrospectively report their experiences while in centers as a child.6.We examined the prevalence of unidentified child abuse victims in outpatients of a large-scale psychiatric hospital.7.To explore possible causes of the difficulties that regular people might experience for reporting abused children, we examined differences among professionals vs. non-professionals (14 occupations, including college students and housekeepers) in terms of expertise of child abuse, by asking them to evaluate the degree of severity of abusive acts in MCAI. We found that professionals perceive abusive acts as less abusive than non-professional people.